Saw this today for the first time. I’d been aware of the classic graphic novel by Alan Moore for years but for some reason I’d never seen the film adaptation. It didn’t seem to be mentioned as much as other DC comic book movies and had nowhere near the buzz associated with the Marvel films. I guess I’d assumed it wasn’t much good and when I read somewhere that it had a limited budget it seemed to confirm that I wasn’t missing much.
Boy, was I wrong! I loved every minute from those fantastic opening credits with Dylan’s Times They Are A’Changing to the very last shot. I really would consider this as Snyder’s best movie, narrowly beating 300.
Anyone else rate the film as highly as I do or am I in the minority on this one?
If the movie has a fault, it’s in struggling too hard to follow the book. A little more flexibility might have improved it.
Not happy with how Rorschach’s handling of the kidnaper was changed, purely to keep it from looking like an influence from “Saw.” And there’s one ten-second clip I will make if I ever digitize the whole thing for streaming storage. It’s an inconsequential sequence that completely interrupts the flow of the movie and suspension of disbelief. (I think someone else hereon described it as an “OMG, I’m Watching A Movie” moment.)
But the overall change to the ending was an improvement over the book’s convoluted squidditry.
I liked it a lot. Very unusual to see super powered folks whose abilities are not conspicuously evenly matched to their adversaries. The dystopian feel of it was a refreshing change of pace too. Parts of the recent Logan have a similar feel. Nice to see film makers experimenting instead of going with the generic noble-bright approach.
I loved the movie, the extended edition version was even better. I never understood or agreed with the comic-purist criticisms of the movie. I thought it did faithful homage to the comic and a great stand-alone movie on its own merit.
I thought the choice to put non A-list actors on the forefront was also a key to its effectiveness. It helped immerse me in the material even more, instead of having to suspend belief watching e.g. a Will Smith / Ben Affleck / Keanu Reeves vehicle.
I was in a bubble where I thought everyone hailed this movie as just about the best adaptation we could have. I was surprised to learn that there are people who don’t like it.
To me, it is amazing and certainly as good at capturing the original story as Lord of the Rings did. Then again, there are people who thought Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings wasn’t a good job, either.
Yeah, it’s amazing. I think the section where Dr. Manhattan tells the story about how he got his powers is an incredible, incredible section of film.
I even understand why they took out the squid-monster, though I will admit that would have been cool.
It’s Zack Snyder’s one successful achievement. He may be a Michael Bay-like hack, but he did do one good movie. Hey, Bay directed The Rock, which is his one really solid movie.
I loved it from the time I first saw it. I agree that I hated the way they changed Rohrshack’s story, but I approve of the change at the end (even if it did deprive us of Giant Space Squid).
and it might be hokey, but I really liked their choices of music, which seemed perfectly suited to the scenes. Especially the Philip Glass piece 9originally used in Koyaanisqatsi) for Dr. Manhattan’s story. I don’t even object to Rohrshack actually pulling at his collar in the cold and damp, exactly in time with Simon and Garfunkle’s lyrics, at the funeral.
If you haven’t seen it, watch the full Director’s Cut. The general release version cut a number of scenes that are really worth watching. (I haven’t seen the Dark Freighter co-feature, but that wasn’t my favorite part of the graphic novel)
Snyder closely followed the surface of the book while missing (and from all evidence, being unaware of) the context.
The point of Moore’s book was that normal well-adjusted people don’t put on masks and go out to fight crime. The people who do that are borderline crazy and the deeper you got into being a superhero, the crazier you got. Moore saw that the mentality of a superhero isn’t all that far from the mentality of a serial killer.
I don’t buy that - the observation that you have to be nuts to become a costumed vigilante is an observation made (in the book) by Hollis Mason, who was hardly a serial killer, nor was his replacement, Dan Drieberg. Laurie Jupiter’s only in it because her attention-seeking mother was, in her day. The movie portrayed Blake’s sociopathy well enough, I thought, though I would have quickened the pace of the scene where he shoots his Vietnamese girlfriend - the movie has him pointing his gun at her for five useless unnecessary seconds before pulling the trigger.
Also, the sex scene between Drieberg and Jupiter goes on for way too long, to the point of being borderline ridiculous, but that’s another matter. I overall liked the movie though I recognize that elements in the original have to be compressed, combined or eliminated.
The intro is great, and it’s pretty good, not merely mediocre or even bad, as some have suggested.
Replacing the ending plot from a genetically engineered Lovecraftian abomination attack to a false flag blamed on Dr. Manhattan was an improvement over the graphic novel.
While we’re at it, V for Vendetta was very different from Moore’s, but still is very good and stands on its own. Moore crafts great worlds but he’s still a nutjob.
There are 3 versions of Watchmen: theatrical, director’s cut with added footage, and the Ultimate Edition which intersperses the Black Freighter parts. Otherwise the BF is standalone. I’ve only seen them separately.
I disagree. Hollis Mason and Dan Drieberg were there to show you characters who were on the dividing line. They were two people who were close enough to see the reality of what being a superhero was like and were sane enough to get out. Mason, as you pointed out, even acknowledged the insanity existed. (And I didn’t say they were serial killers. I said they had a mentality that was similar to the mentality of a serial killer.)
Laurie Jupiter was brought up to be a superhero. She was there to show that somebody who’s raised in a crazy environment doesn’t recognize the craziness around them; they think it’s normal. Laurie was another character who got out when she saw the reality.
The ones who didn’t get out were the Comedian, Rorsach, Manhattan, and Ozymandius; certainly none of them qualifies as a mentally stable normal human being. That was the joke the Comedian saw; he was aware he was crazy but he saw how society allowed him to be crazy because his particular form of craziness was useful.
Mason was normal: he put on a mask when criminals did and the cops couldn’t keep up. Dreiberg was the man in the middle: just crazy enough to take up the mask, smart enough to finally figure out it led to an abyss. Laurie never really had a choice and got out the minute she could. The rest? Batshit crazy, and IMHO Snyder played that string just right, especially by focusing on the early line of Rorschach’s about how few of them remain sane.
The great omission, which simply wouldn’t fit into the movie timeline, was Rorschach dragging the psychiatrist off the edge with him. One of the truly terrifying sequences in any novel I know of.
I just rewatched this a few weeks ago, by myself, an unusual thing. And fell in love with it all over again. (The pisser was that my unopened copy of The Black Freighter was bad, and I had to pay a rental fee to see it before watching the main movie. So… there’s an official cut now blending the two? Hmmm. I had it blocked out as an HD editing project, myself. And was going to remove that five seconds from the Laurie/Dan restaurant scene…)
I don’t think Moore saw Dr. Manhattan as crazy. His point with him is someone who was so powerful would eventually stop caring about Humanity because he could no longer relate to Humanity. I don’t agree but that was his argument.
Well, “crazy” is a relative and sweeping term. That he lost touch with his human roots, to the point of idly watching millions die, not to mention smaller incidents, is a form of dementia only excused because of his godlike evolution.
And, of course, he did come back and screw up the DC universe. I think that’s hilarious despite the fan screaming.
There’s a small bit towards the end of the film, too. When he says to Laurie “Perhaps I will create some [life]” a swirl of particles coalesces into her midsection. About as subtle as Deckard’s glowing eyes.
The Watchmen is one of my favorites. I’ve only seen the director’s cut, so I don’t know what people who saw it in theater thought was so bad. I bought it on blue ray and it looks incredible.
It’s the closest I’ve ever seen a movie come to the novel (among the subset, at least, of which I’ve read and seen both). The actors even look quite a bit like their ink-drawn counterparts. The changed ending didn’t mess it up too bad and it was understandable, considering the budget.
I haven’t watched a whole lot of comic-based movies, considering their current wild popularity, but this is definitely one of the best, in my opinion. I’d go into more detail except it’s been several years now since I’ve seen it. I should watch it again soon.
I think it was more intriguing and symbolic in the book where he goes off to create life wholesale. He’s moving up to and embracing actual God status.
As for sanity, it’s way too much to say that Laurie and Dan walked back from the abyss. Remember, their deep into their fetish even years later. After failing to have sex earlier, once they go out adventuring they get crazy with it in the Archie. No one who puts on a mask - of the second generation - comes off as sane. And many of the first generation didn’t suffer happy fates, either.
Mason always struck me as – well, look, he’s a cop, is all; he was a cop in the '30s, and he was a cop in the '40s, and he was a cop in the '50s, and he was still a cop in the '60s when he finally retired from the NYPD when he was getting on in years. And he was a superhero in the '30s, and he was a superhero in the '40s, and he was a superhero in the '50s, and he was still a superhero in the '60s when he finally retired from that when he was getting on in years. Near as I can tell, he retired from both roles for the same reason, and had a banquet thrown in his honor and got presented with a trophy and wrote his autobiography, and when the story opens he keeps busy by fixing up old cars and he drinks but not to excess and he otherwise just acts like what he is: an amiable retired cop.
At that, Dreiberg didn’t get out because he had a bout of sanity; he got out because they passed a law saying hey, don’t do that. Absent that, I see no indication that he’d have ever quit – until he eventually couldn’t cut it any more, at which point he presumably would’ve followed his role model’s example. (After all, by the end of the story he’s ready to get right back into it.)
Now, I’d be happy to argue in favor of Veidt, because, hey, big fan of the guy; but I get that it’d be an argument. Mason, though? He’s a boy scout.
I wasn’t a massive fan of the graphic novel but one thing I think the movie did very well was to make the bomb/attack connected to Dr. Manhattan. Thought that was a more clever touch then the telepathic-squid bomb.
Otherwise I didn’t really like the fight scenes but was impressed with the scope of the movie.